


Close Contact

by thegrumblingirl



Series: Exploration Date: 2048 [2]
Category: Almost Human
Genre: M/M, and other preferences, basically a lot of touching, exploration of Dorian's personal space, sequel to 'Delicate Questions and Cotton Sheets', that burning question that John doesn't dare ask
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 04:31:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrumblingirl/pseuds/thegrumblingirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two months into active duty with Kennex, Dorian felt a tentative, but strong hand on his left shoulder.</p><p>“Dorian? You’re dead on your feet, man, you should go charge up. C’mon, I’ll drive you to the lab.”</p><p>They’d just wrapped up a smuggling case that had involved a lot of seedy places with little to no exposure to sunlight. Dorian, who had been running a little low on power to begin with, hadn’t had much of a chance to re-charge himself using solar energy. Despite himself, he shook his head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close Contact

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to _[Delicate Questions and Cotton Sheets](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1055645)_. Dorian and John get closer, and John finally gets to ask that question that plagued him after _Skin_.

Two months into active duty with Kennex, Dorian felt a tentative, but strong hand on his left shoulder.

“Dorian? You’re dead on your feet, man, you should go charge up. C’mon, I’ll drive you to the lab.”

They’d just wrapped up a smuggling case that had involved a lot of seedy places with little to no exposure to sunlight. Dorian, who had been running a little low on power to begin with, hadn’t had much of a chance to re-charge himself using solar energy. Despite himself, he shook his head.

“Nah, it’s still early. Let’s just go somewhere with lots of open space.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I don’t… the lab is dark, too.”

John threw him a sidelong look. “Alright. Let’s go for a nice walk,” he acquiesced, quietly teasing. He relaxed when he saw Dorian crack a small smile.

“Just don’t expect me to skip through any fields today.”

“‘Course not.” John threw the car on the road and took them towards one of the last remaining parks of the city.

Once there, they got out and just walked. Dorian took a deep breath, feeling the fresh air cool his filter systems. The sun came breaking through the clouds just then, and Dorian set the protocols to maximum energy generation. They walked for about ten minutes, not saying a word. Dorian watched a couple of kids running around a small playground, moms and dads sitting on benches in an outer circle, talking amongst each other or just watching them. John had gone a few more paces before he noticed that Dorian had stopped. He turned and went back towards him, following his gaze.

“We do it for them, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we do,” he answered simply. He could never really tell what to expect when Dorian asked questions like this, but he figured honesty was the best policy.

Dorian was about to speak when, suddenly, he tilted his head, blue lights dancing across the skin of his face.

“What is it?”

“Several dispatch calls are going out to different units. The roof of an old parking structure downtown caved in, people are stuck in vehicles and under the ruins. We should go help.”

Without thinking, John moved his hand to grip Dorian’s elbow before he could rush back to the car. “You’re not done charging yet. We can sit this one out, or I could go and help, you stay here. Sit on a bench, entertain the kids with the disco lights. Call me when you’re ready and I’ll pick you up.”

“John, I can help scan the wreckage for heat signals, it doesn’t take too much battery to do that. I want to help.”

They were left staring at each other, and John felt the unwelcome reminder of that one time when Dorian had swung himself up into an elevator shaft without him.

“Alright. But the second you feel close to hibernating, you tell me.”

“You got it. Swear on _Benny and the Jets_.”

Kennex rolled his eyes, but couldn’t help the smile as he pushed past Dorian, dragging him along by his elbow before he caught up. “You’re gonna get hit one of these days.”

“Patience, Detective.”

Once they were at the site, they looked around for familiar faces. Dorian spotted the Captain first and tipped John’s shoulder before heading in her direction. With Maldonado, there were Valerie, Paul, and a few others from their station.

“You ok?” the Captain asked when they approached.

Dorian nodded.

“I’m keeping an eye on him,” John added, stepping up behind Dorian and hovering at his left shoulder.

Maldonado gave him a shrewd look, but didn’t comment. Then, she turned to her team. “Right. All of you, team up with your MX — or DRN,” she added, glancing towards John and Dorian, “and scan the building for heat signatures of any kind and alert the rescue teams to their location. Humans, bots, I want them all out of this place and off to hospital or whatever facility they need as soon as possible. When you’ve found someone, see if you can do anything to make access easier for the rescue units, but be careful. Don’t take any unnecessary risks, we’re here to help them, not get ourselves injured along with them. Got that?” She nodded, dismissing them, and off they went.

John stuck close to Dorian as they walked along the South-West perimeter of the collapsed structure. Stahl and her MX brushed past them at a faster pace to get to the North-West side. Valerie caught Dorian’s eye and quickly put a hand on his arm.

“Heard you closed your case this morning. Glad you got those assholes,” she smiled at them both quickly before striding ahead.

“Thanks!” Dorian called after her. He was smiling, but John could tell he was trying to save his strength. He pushed forward into Dorian’s space a little as they walked, crowding against his side.

“If this is too much, tell me now,” he urged Dorian.

“Will you stop nagging?” Dorian met his eyes defiantly, but didn’t move away.

“Yeah, Kennex, stop nagging. You’re a Detective, not his girlfriend. Not that a synthetic would know what to do with one,” Paul smirked as he lead a small team of officers and MXs down the other walkway to cover the North-East corner. He quickly stepped towards them and clapped a hand on Dorian’s shoulder. “Just make sure you scan for humans, too, not just your kind.”

Dorian scowled and flinched away from the touch. “The MX aren’t ‘my kind.’”

Paul shrugged. “Well. Us humans definitely aren’t, either.” With a final smirk, he turned on his heel and walked on.

“Don’t listen to that dick,” John muttered. He moved to put his hand on Dorian’s back to get them walking again, but reigned in the gesture. “C’mon. Let’s save some heat signatures.” As they went, Dorian looked down at John’s hand between their bodies, close to his own.

Over time, Dorian had learnt what preferences felt like. Sure, he knew what he liked and what he didn’t like at a fundamental level — like the term ‘synthetic.’ He’d formed preferences for many things during the few months he’d been active before, but his life seemed… fuller, now. There were more things to consider, more situations that made him reevaluate what he knew.

The first time he’d stopped to consider what was puzzling him now, John had stepped in between him and Detective Paul. Dorian, usually the one to stay calm in the face of the man’s invectives, had been entirely too close to punching his lights out after he’d accused John and Dorian of bending the rules during their last arrest.

Well. They had… sidestepped the rules, for a second; but arresting a band of human traffickers had been more than worth it.

Anyway, before he could grapple with his own impulses, John had pushed in front of him, barking at Paul to do his own homework before pissing on everybody else’s. Doing that, he’d used the opening that Dorian had given him by stepping back from Det. Paul after the guy had gotten way too close for comfort.

Dorian had registered the rest of their heated argument — that Captain Maldonado had to step out of her office to break up and disperse by telling them to shut it and do their jobs — with half an ear. When John had positioned himself in front of him, he’d felt the urge to get closer, to step up to let him know he had his back, and he’d known John wouldn’t mind if he did, for he did that often enough himself. Seconds before that, Paul’s deliberate breach of personal space had sent him scurrying. As Dorian had fought to reconcile the conflicting signals in his head, he’d felt John’s stare on him.

“You ok there?”

“Huh? Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

John had looked dubious, but hadn’t said anything else.

The longer this went on, the more Dorian experimented with different people’s personal space ranges. Of course, in theory, he used personal space boundaries just like any other human would. But in the end, using those boundaries to select who to stay close to and who to give a wide berth depended on trust — and actively trusting people was a decision Dorian had had little cause to make the last time he was awake.

The Captain, he gave an extra foot out of respect. He liked her immensely, but she commanded respect and authority as easily as she breathed, so he found he wanted to give her space. Most of the other people at the station, he moved around with the usual distance of people working long hours in a relatively small space together, although the majority gave him a wider berth because he was, well, only almost human. Many had simply come to accept his presence the way they did with the MX units, but it still wasn’t the same — Paul let him feel that the keenest.

Not that Dorian wanted to, anyway, but the prickly Detective stayed away from him the furthest, only got close when he had something condescending or dismissive or goading to say to him. Dorian had a mind to tell him that that meant that, subconsciously, Paul worked on the assumption that for a DRN personal space held the same meaning as for humans, but he didn’t relish the prospect of another fight breaking out.

That left the two people he got closest to — and yet, they weren’t the same. Valerie he gravitated towards because she was a great cop, smart, and a good person. She’d made him feel welcome, and it was obvious she cared about John, too. Kennex would grumble at him if he told him that that was one of his biggest reasons for liking her, but that was just John. John, whose boundaries Dorian had no qualms pushing, even before the man had opened up to him after their first few cases together. Dorian wanted to be close to him whenever he was with him, wanted him to know he was there, wanted to be sure of John’s presence in return.

So now, when John opted not to touch him when, ten minutes before, he probably would have, Dorian frowned and filed the thought away for later.

Four hours into the rescue effort, Dorian nearly collapsed against Kennex, who caught him, steadying them both on the uneven rubble — thanks to his hovering, he’d only been a foot away when Dorian made a small sound and his knees buckled.

“I told you to tell me!” he grunted into Dorian’s ear, waving a hand at one of the medics to give him a hand. The guy came over and together, they walked Dorian towards a pile of debris the DRN could sit down on. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I felt fine, I just, ungh—”

“Get Rudy Lom, now!” John called to one of the uniforms guarding the perimeter. When he noticed that the medic was trying to read Dorian’s vitals, he shook his head. “He’s a DRN. Go back and help, I’ll wait here with him.” The medic looked uncertain, but eventually left them to it.

Dorian slouched sideways a little, into Kennex, who oomphed a little, but then reached to prop Dorian up against his side.

“You’re not powering down, are you?” he asked, his hands fluttering over Dorian’s shoulders and back as if checking for a switch he could flick to make sure that didn’t happen.

“I’ll be ok. Rudy can give me a boost and then I’ll just have to find a pod.”

He felt John nod. “Ok.” A breath. “Ok. I’ll take you to the station.” His hands dropped away from Dorian’s torso.

Dorian made an involuntary unhappy noise before he could stop himself.

“What’s wrong?”

“No, it’s just… it’s ok when you do it.”

“Do what?”

“Touch me.” No sooner had the words left his mouth than Dorian felt John tense up against him. “It’s comforting,” he added by way of explanation, shrugging a little.

Hesitantly, John raised his right hand from where it was resting on the stone behind them and put it on the small of Dorian’s back. He splayed his fingers when Dorian immediately relaxed at the contact. Swallowing, John forced himself to look the other way, as if searching for Rudy.

“Thank you.”

“No problem,” John answered softly, turning his eyes back to his partner.

Dorian spent the night at the robot facility a block away from the station. The next morning being a Saturday, Captain Maldonado had told John not to come back until Monday.

“You both need and deserve the rest after your last case,” she’d said. “Go home, get some sleep.”

When Dorian disconnected from the pod he’d spent the night recharging in, John was waiting for him outside.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Feelin’ good,” Dorian replied, stretching a little as he walked. “Though, honestly, I’d probably nap the rest of the day if I had the chance.”

“Let’s go, then.”

“Where to?”

“Somewhere you can nap.”

To Dorian’s amusement, they ended up at John’s house again. He turned a questioning look on John, who just shrugged.

“I seem to recall you liked sleeping in a proper bed.”

“That’s right, I did.”

“There you are, then. You know where everything is, make yourself at home. I’ll be in the living room, brooding.”

Dorian recognised this as a dig at the last time he’d teased John about his curmudgeonly demeanour and propensity to glare at nothing when left to his own devices, and smiled. “Fine. You go, howl at the moon.” He went into the guest room and found that the old pair of pyjamas he’d worn the last time was still lying on the bed where he’d left them, as if they’d been waiting for him.

He was asleep (activating the memory-compressing protocols) within seconds of his head hitting the pillow.

It was hours later when he woke up again, the sun coming from the South. He hadn’t meant to sleep past noon, but now there was nothing for it. Still in John’s pyjamas, he padded out of the room, towards the living room. As expected, John was there, reading.

“Ah, sleeping beauty,” he greeted him with a grin. Dorian frowned a little before his mind supplied that Sleeping Beauty was an old folk tale often used as a nickname for people just out of bed.

“Why, thank you,” he shot back anyway, flashing John an answering grin. He watched as John raised an eyebrow, probably uncertain whether Dorian had caught the reference in its entirety. Before he could say something, however, John shook his head lightly and picked up another reading pad instead.

“Here. Found this in the online library while you were getting your power nap.” He tossed the pad at Dorian, who caught it more or less gracefully, his reflexes still a little slowed down. Glancing at the title, he had to fight a snort.

“ _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_ Really, John?”

“Aww, don’t tell me you’ve read it already.” Kennex feigned disappointment, making Dorian laugh out loud this time.

“I haven’t, but I’ve… heard of it. Thanks.” He rounded the sofa to sit down next to John. The Detective’s eyes flickered between them for a second. “John? If what I said yesterday made you uncomfortable, I—”

“What? No, it didn’t, I was just… I was surprised, that’s all. I didn’t know I was, you know. Good at comforting anyone anymore.”

“You are.”

“Good. That’s good, right?”

“John.” Dorian tilted his head, a knowing look on his face.

“What?”

“What is it you really want to ask?”

“What do you mean?” The pitch of John’s voice rose higher than he’d meant it to on the question, and Dorian raised a brow.

“That. Go on. I keep telling you, anything you wanna know.”

John sighed, but nodded. “Remember the first time you were here, when you told me about your… bits,” John echoed Dorian’s words from that particular conversation.

“I do,” Dorian replied with a chuckle.

“Well… that case just had me thinking, about bots and feelings and… contact. And, I mean, it’s one thing to have working parts, but… Sex bots have working parts, too, but no-one ever asks whether they enjoy it, do they? And not everyone enjoys touch, even if they have the capacity to, biology isn’t everything. So I tried to pay more attention to how you were handling it, and we kept getting closer, so I reacted to that, I guess, but —”

“But then you saw me flinching away from Paul yesterday.”

“Yeah. I didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable around me after that.”

Dorian smiled at him. “Who knew John Kennex could be sensitive.”

“Hey, I’m trying to do the team-building thing here,” Kennex indicated the space between with his hand.

“And you’re doing great,” Dorian reassured him. Then, with a grin, he let himself list to the right, thudding against John’s left shoulder, looking up at him at a slightly crooked angle. “See? I don’t feel uncomfortable at all.”

John tried to suppress a smile but, as so often happened with Dorian, failed. “You enjoy that?”

“Yep.”

“Ok, I can work with that.” He was quiet for a few seconds, but then raised his left arm to wrap it around Dorian’s shoulders. “How about that?”

“Even better.” Dorian wriggled around a little until he fit comfortably under John’s arm. Because he was already sitting at an angle, he pulled his legs up on the sofa, tucking them in under himself, his hands in his lap. If he were to lay his head against John’s chest, he was sure he would be able to hear his heartbeat loud and clear.


End file.
